Return to scene 27 to make your choice.
‡‡ Those who can’t afford a people smuggler may end up killed, or living as ‘internally displaced people’, which means they live like refugees within their own country.
FACT FILE:
LIFE IN LIMBO
All over the world, asylum seekers and refugees live in countries like Malaysia, Kenya, Turkey, Indonesia, and many others. These countries give limited protection and opportunities for refugees, and visas to resettle in Western countries are so rare that most refugees will never get one. Unable to go home, unable to reach a country that will give them full citizenship, these refugees may spend the rest of their lives ‘in limbo’.
Imagine living in a country where it was illegal for you to work, where you couldn’t ever go to school, where you might be sent to jail at any time for just being in the country, and where you couldn’t go to a hospital if you got sick. How would you survive? How would you make a future for your children in such a place? This is the reality of life for thousands of refugees and asylum seekers around the world.
Even some asylum seekers who live in Australia feel as though they are in ‘limbo’ here while they wait for the government to hear their case and grant them a permanent visa.
It may seem strange, but many host countries actually don’t want to offer laws and services that would make life easier for refugees, because they don’t want to encourage too many refugees to come there.
Many countries would prefer to make it safe for refugees to return to their own countries instead – but to do this, we would have to make a huge global effort to eradicate all famine and war. Can it be done?
In the future, because of climate change, it’s possible that we will also have ‘climate refugees’ who can never return home because their homes are underwater, or stricken by never-ending drought. No country currently has any laws to deal with ‘climate refugees’, because it hasn’t happened yet.
How can we do our share to help and to be a world leader in the future?
Return to scene 34 to make your choice.
FACT FILE:
AUSTRALIA’S IMMIGRATION POLICY
Every country has the right to make its own laws about who to let into their country, how many people can come, and who can go on to be offered citizenship of that country. These are called a country’s immigration laws.
In Australia, there’s a big debate about whether we should take more, or fewer, refugees than we do (between 13,000 and 20,000 per year from 2010 to 2017). Some say we can’t afford it and should take less; others say it’s our duty as a wealthy country to help more of those in need. Long-term studies show that refugees usually do lots of good in their new homes – bringing new culture and generating money of their own – but some Australians fear people different to them will ‘take over’.
Imagine you have control over immigration into Australia. There are 65.3 million people without a safe home who would like to live here – nearly three times as many people as Australia’s entire population. How many refugees will you let in – andhow will you decide who gets to come first? This is a thorny problem that even the world’s greatest leaders can’t solve.
Some refugees are given a visa for Australia before they arrive. Other asylum seekers come without a visa, and although they have a legal right to seek safety, in 1992Australia started holding asylum seekers in detention centres in Australia while their claims were processed. In 2001, Australia introduced a new law: to send asylum seekers to offshore detention.
Australia set up two offshore detention centres: one on Nauru (a tiny island in the Pacific), and another on Manus Island (in Papua New Guinea). The centres are intended to put people off attempting to reach Australia by boat – by showing them they will be sent to an offshore detention centre instead if they try.
Both major political parties have sent asylum seekers, including children, to offshore detention in the years since 2001. Sometimes teenage boys have been mistaken for adult men and detained with the adults for some time; this happens in one of the scenes in this book. Hundreds of asylum seekers have been held in offshore detention for years, with no hope of reaching a safe country, and still too afraid to go home. Waiting in limbo, under immense mental pressure, without decent medical care or education, has driven many asylum seekers to despair.
Meanwhile, at the time this book went to print (January 2018), the government has also cut hundreds of millions of dollars from Australia’s foreign-aid budget, and greatly reduced the numbers of humanitarian visas Australia offers to those waiting in refugee camps overseas and in ‘transit’ countries like Malaysia and Indonesia.
While some people are pleased that Australia’s policies are keeping asylum seekers out, others claim that we have turned our backs on those in need. But ‘tough’ immigration policies only exist because they seem popular with the voting Australian public.
Are these laws popular with you? If not, how are you going to let the government know about it? And what do you think should be the alternative to the ‘Pacific Solution’?
Return to scene 36 to continue with the story.
FACT FILE:
INTERVIEW WITH HANI ABDILE
Hani Abdile is a poet and an asylum seeker who travelled alone from Somalia to Australia when she was only seventeen years old. Many of the scenes in this book are based on Hani’s memories, and the poems on pages 122–123, 265–266, 285–286, 292–293 and 302 are written by her.
EMILY: Hani, the first question I want to ask you is: What does freedom mean to you?
HANI: Freedom means a lot to me.
